In 2000, Real Madrid were named the best club of the 20th century following a FIFA vote.
Madrid had won a record eight European Cup/Champions League titles by then, including the first five in a row from 1956 to 1960. Last year’s win against Borussia Dortmund at Wembley gave them their 15th triumph in the competition — eight more than any other club.
But something was missing.
Many of Madrid’s great European rivals had women’s teams by the turn of the millennium.
Bayern Munich set up theirs in 1970, Barcelona established one in 1988 and Liverpool did so the following year — although Juventus, Milan, Manchester United and Dortmund only came on board from the late 2010s onwards. In some cases, there had previously been unofficial teams linked to these major clubs but many were not ratified until recent decades. In England, for example, women’s football was actually banned by the FA between 1921 and 1971.
In 2013, two entrepreneurs delivered a message on a napkin to Madrid’s president Florentino Perez. It read: “You will not be the best club in the world in the 21st century if you don’t have a women’s team”.
It took another six years for Madrid to establish their women’s side, via a controversial takeover of local club Tacon. Since then, the side known as Las Blancas — the feminine form of the men’s team’s Los Blancos nickname derived from their all-white kit — have been Champions League regulars but never challenged Barcelona’s domestic dominance. Barca have won all 18 matches between the sides, scoring 66 goals and conceding just seven.
Nearly five years on from their founding, Real Madrid Femenino are now on the verge of their first Champions League semi-final after beating visitors Arsenal 2-0 in the first leg of their quarter-final on Tuesday. The return leg is on Wednesday at the Emirates Stadium.
This is how they got here.
Ana Rossell is a 44-year-old former player who featured for Atletico Madrid and another local side, Canillas, but dreamed of playing for Real Madrid, where she was one of their club-owning socios, as members are known. From 1998, she sent letters to Madrid’s directors asking them to consider creating a women’s section — but those requests were always turned down, with executives claiming such a project was not financially viable.
In 2013, she met Lolo Merinero, a former banker who, like her, was involved in a group opposing Perez before that year’s presidential elections at Madrid. Merinero had no previous football experience but was involved in business development and saw an opportunity.
That year, Rossell and Merinero delivered that napkin to Perez, via his chauffeur, imploring him to set up a women’s team, mimicking the way Perez had asked French great Zinedine Zidane to join the club from Juventus in 2001.
A few weeks after that, the pair received an unexpected call inviting them to a meeting with the club’s general manager, Jose Angel Sanchez, where they explained key issues such as the costs associated with setting up a women’s side.
“To capture his attention during the presentation of our project, we made him understand that the women’s section was the definitive tool to position the Real Madrid brand in the United States, where women’s football had a much bigger following and where the club had started to tour,” Merinero tells The Athletic.
But, again, the club closed the door, citing the same financial concerns. That rejection led to Rossell and Merinero taking over the women’s team at a modest Madrid club: Canillas, based in the north of the city.
In 2016, Rossell and Merinero absorbed Canillas’ women’s teams into one club called Tacon — their name both an acronym standing for work (‘trabajo’ in Spanish), daring/bravery (‘atrevimiento’), knowledge (‘conocimiento’), organisation (‘organizacion’) and notoriety (‘notoriedad’) and the word meaning ‘heel’ in Spanish; their logo featured a football boot with a high heel.
Tacon’s beginnings were not easy. They had an initial budget of €10,000 ($10,800/£8,000 at current exchange rates) and started life in the second division. During this time, Real Madrid remained in touch to ask for updates on the league and the state of Spanish women’s football.
“There was always the idea of creating a women’s team at Madrid, we had that vision, but nothing was agreed,” says Marta Tejedor, Tacon coach from 2016-18. “There was a need in the air for Madrid to create a women’s section; there was social pressure, a feeling in the world of women’s football that Madrid needed it.”
Investment via a loan from Rene Ramos, the brother and agent of the captain of Madrid’s men’s team, Sergio Ramos, proved crucial. It helped multiply Tacon’s budget eightfold and attract other sponsors as the team aimed for promotion.
Tacon line up before a game in February 2020, when they had already been absorbed by Real Madrid (Oscar J. Barroso / AFP7 / Europa Press Sports via Getty Images)
But Tacon fell just short of the top flight in their first two seasons, 2016-17 and 2017-18 — losing a play-off final in the latter — and there were off-pitch problems, too.
A series of disagreements between their management and Rene Ramos led to financial problems for the club, which fell into debt to the agent. His involvement ended when Tacon were taken over by Madrid, as he wanted to avoid a potential conflict of interest given his brother’s ongoing place in the men’s first team.
In 2018-19, Tacon completed an unbeaten season in the league and won promotion to the top flight, but newspaper El Confidencial reported that 14 players had not been paid. Club officials from the time say a sponsor agreed to advance payment to solve the issue. Madrid became involved when Tacon went up.
“Real Madrid were slow to make a women’s team, because they clearly needed a team in the first division,” says Malena Ortiz, the now 27-year-old midfielder who was Tacon’s first captain. “Buying a club in the second division was risky.”
Madrid moved quickly after Tacon’s promotion, reaching an agreement in less than two weeks and taking over all of the club’s debts — another local team, Madrid CFF, were an option but missed out, in part because their TV and commercial revenue was shared with the rest of Liga F, the elite league in the Spanish women’s club game.
“When we were promoted, we didn’t know that we were going to become Real Madrid so quickly,” says Ortiz. “When the news came out, we shared it by WhatsApp without believing it — especially my sister (Samarra) and I, who were there from the beginning.”
It was not all straightforward.
The deal had to be approved by Madrid’s general assembly in September 2019 — which was after the 2019-20 Liga F season had started. That meant the team competed under the name of Tacon and with a different badge in Real Madrid Femenino’s first official campaign.
Brazilian midfielder Thaisa Moreno was the club’s first signing, from Milan, though Swedish striker Kosovare Asllani asked to be listed as such when she arrived from Linkoping in her homeland. They were joined by five more new players: Ana Valles, Daiane, Aurelie Kaci, Ainoa Campo and Sofia Jakobsen.
The mix with the squad’s semi-professional players who’d been with Tacon caused some issues.
Asllani signed for Madrid in 2019 (Angel Martinez/Getty Images)
“The truth is that it was the biggest difficulty I’ve had in my coaching career,” says David Aznar, who became Madrid’s first women’s coach having initially managed Tacon. “It was a very strange mix of players who were making their debut in the Primera Division alongside world-class stars. But the credit goes to those who came from Tacon because they were the ones who had to make the leap in level.”
Ortiz, who now plays for Swiss side Servette, agrees: “The jump was difficult, because you were working at Real Madrid’s facilities but you were really a newly promoted team.”
A 9-1 drubbing by Barcelona on September 8, 2019 — just eight days before the crucial vote at the club’s assembly — raised some doubts among fans and within the club. But the women’s team ultimately got approved with 810 of a possible 894 votes.
The Real Madrid brand was a powerful tool in securing new signings. According to Ortiz, the players also benefited from using the same base as the men’s teams.
“The day-to-day life of a female player is the same as that of a male player from Real Madrid,” she says. “I could train and prepare for everything there, the coaching staff had a lot of people at our disposal and the facilities were incredible. I felt lucky, because we came from a humble club in a field, with a locker room that was a workers’ hut.”
By the 2021-22 season, only two of the original 20 players from the Tacon squad remained: Ariana Arias and Lorena Navarro. Some bemoaned the loss of the team’s previous spirit.
“The essence of the club I was at has been lost,” says Diego Camacho, a former midfielder for teams including Levante and Sporting Gijon who coached Tacon from 2015-2016. “It was a family club, a close club. One of the big differences is professionalism. Before, they lived football with a lot of passion but they were still students.”
In 2021, their former goalkeeper Zara Mujica told online outlet Managing Madrid she had suffered mistreatment by top executives within Madrid’s women’s set-up. Her complaint centred around alleged irregularities regarding medical insurance, which senior figures at the club disputed.
Asllani, the club’s first official signing, also criticised the culture around the team in a 2022 interview with Swedish outlet Expressen.
“It’s difficult to go into details,” Asllani said. “I think there is a culture at the club that is not healthy for the players, which I have been in myself, where they almost forced me to play injured and I didn’t get help. The board didn’t listen to the medical team and in the end it (leaving the club) was a decision I had to make to have a longer sporting career. It became a very unhealthy and dangerous environment for the players.
“I care very much about the club, but I feel it is in the wrong hands.”
Another notable case was that of Marta Corredera, the first player to score a Champions League goal for Barcelona’s women’s team and an 85-time Spain international. The defender joined Madrid in 2020 but did not play for the club after announcing her pregnancy in 2022 and left the following year.
“From the moment I gave birth, I felt very abandoned because I had no contact with the club, nor with the physios, nor with the trainer, nor with a doctor,” she told El Periodico. “It wasn’t easy for me mentally … We are talking about a situation that goes before that of the footballer to that of the person.”
Madrid did not respond to a request for comment on these issues when approached by The Athletic.
The club have never presented a women’s team signing individually. Madrid’s official annual accounts show they spent just over €2million on their women’s side in the 2020-21 season — less than half the €5.5m outlay by Barcelona for the same period. Earlier this month, Madrid’s German midfielder Melanie Leupolz told the Kicker FE:male podcast, as reported by Marca, “In the Christmas party we asked the president (Perez) when we could play at the Bernabeu and he told us, ‘When you win the first title’.”
Madrid’s women are enjoying their best season so far. They are second with 13 games to go in Liga F, 17 points ahead of third and fourth-placed Atletico Madrid and Bilbao’s Athletic Club. They are seven points behind Barca, who also have a goal difference of 81 compared to Madrid’s 42.
Madrid have never beaten Barca in women’s football (Dennis Agyeman/Europa Press via Getty Images)
Barcelona continue to be the benchmark and their aggregate 8-1 win against Madrid in this month’s Copa de la Reina semi-finals was further proof of the gap between them and the rest of Spanish women’s football. The Catalans have won the last five league titles in a row, the first time that has happened. This Sunday, the sides meet again in Liga F.
“The difficulty in the Spanish league really is that we are up against the best team in the world. Barcelona have proved that by winning three of the last four Champions Leagues,” says Aznar, who is now Athletic Club’s women’s coach.
“It’s difficult to be able to fight a regular competition against a team that practically never loses a game. This season has been the most demanding for Barcelona, which is a sign that Spanish football is better.”
Madrid were eliminated by Barcelona in the quarter-finals of their first Champions League campaign in 2021-22 and went out after the group stage in the next two editions. This season, they finished second in a group also including Chelsea, Twente and Celtic to set up a last-eight tie against Arsenal, the competition’s winners in 2007.
Goals from Linda Caicedo and Athenea del Castillo gave them a brilliant 2-0 win in this week’s first leg, but that game was marred by complaints about the wet and muddy pitch at the Alfredo Di Stefano Stadium, which is part of Madrid’s training ground. It was labelled a “disgrace” by the former Arsenal striker Ian Wright and drew criticism from the players’ football association in England:
“Pitches like this don’t just impact the quality of the game, they put player safety at risk. On multiple occasions over the last few days, in important ties (also referring to the League Cup final in England between Chelsea and Manchester City last Saturday at Pride Park, home of second-tier men’s team Derby County), our members have been asked to play in substandard conditions.
“World-class players deserve world-class standards, and they are right to expect better.”
Arsenal striker Beth Mead, who played the first half of Tuesday’s game, told Sky Sports: “It’s disappointing for a quarter-final of a Champions League.”
According to former Tacon coach Tejedor, there are other reasons why Madrid lag behind Barcelona.
“It is now a very transfer-based team,” she says. “The difference with other competitors like Barcelona is that Madrid don’t focus on the academy. Madrid are a bit far away from being able to challenge Barcelona, but it’s logical because it takes time.”
Madrid provided eight of Spain’s 2023 World Cup-winning squad, including Olga Carmona, scorer of their winning goal in the final against England. Their 20-year-old Colombia forward Caicedo, meanwhile, won the ‘Golden Girl’ award in 2023 as the world’s best under-21 women’s player. But some who The Athletic spoke to for this piece said Madrid’s level of talent does not compare to that of their rivals.
Rossell, the department’s sporting director, has not spoken in public for some time. She called the Madrid women’s team a “medium and long-term project” at a women’s football conference in 2024. “We are the baby of La Liga, the newest team,” she said. “We have come here to try to help this continue to improve, to make Spanish women’s football grow and to try to match the success we have in the men’s game, which will take us a few years yet, but we are on the way.”
Current Madrid Women coach Alberto Toril was asked about his side’s progress in his pre-match press conference before the Arsenal game this week. “The progression is constant, sometimes there are things you can’t see,” he said. “We are on course for the best season of our five years. Until March or April, we are involved in all competitions. We have the chance to take another step forward. We can reach the semi-finals and, if not, we’ll keep trying … We’re going to be close to winning titles very soon.”
With the Clasico in Barcelona on Sunday and then the second leg against Arsenal in London three days later, in some ways this next week will show us how far the Madrid women’s team have come in the past five years.
But in other ways, there is still plenty of catching up to do.
(Top photo: Angel Martinez/Getty Images)
